Why It Is Too Soon To Judge The Ranked Play Changes

by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

The new Ranked Play changes have only been live for a few days, but I am already seeing lots of complaints from players about how they are still stuck in MMR Hell and the changes didn’t work. In fact, I have heard the complaints so often that it has motivated me to write about it because it simply isn’t true.

The fact is that it is way too soon to judge whether or not the changes to Ranked Play are having the desired effect. While Blizzard may have enough data from the thousands of games played on the new patch to form some preliminary conclusions, individual players do not. Forming an opinion based on your own limited experience in conjunction with comments from a few like minded individuals is the definition of anecdotal evidence. Not only is it not supported by fact, but it fosters a negative mindset that isn’t going to help you do any better.

I think there are two main reasons that people are upset. The first is that they don’t properly understand the changes and what they are designed to do. The second is that the results they expect from the changes are not realistic.

Understanding The Changes

For many players, the root of the problem is that they don’t read patch notes. They hear about things second or third hand and then form an opinion based on that information. They are playing a patch notes version of the Telephone Game so it is understandable that they might be confused about things. Even if you do read the patch notes it can be tough to fully understand everything given phrases like Uncertainty Boost and MMR Normalization. The fact that the scoring system has also been changed from Ranks to Leagues only adds to the potential confusion.

The simple explanation is that the amount of MMR points that you gain from a win or lose for a loss have been increased. Blizzard is calling this an Uncertainty Boost and the goal is to allow your more recent games to have a larger impact on your MMR than games you played six months or a year ago.

Your MMR has not been reset. Every game you have ever played still factors into your MMR, they just have less of an impact the more games you play going forward. Your Rank has not been reset either, even though it is now called something different. If you were “stuck” at Rank 35 prior to the changes, that is still your starting point when you begin your placement games, it has just been converted to a League equivalent. This leads us directly into our next topic…

Setting Realistic Expectations

Since your starting point hasn’t changed, it should be fairly intuitive that ten placement games can only do so much to change your MMR, even with the Uncertainty Boost. Unfortunately, many players go in with unrealistic expectations because they don’t understand that their starting point hasn’t changed, or they feel like they are better than their starting point. They think that once they play their their ten placement games they will magically be placed in whatever League they feel like they deserve to be in. If you were Rank 35 with a 1400 MMR before the patch then you aren’t going to end up in Diamond no matter how well your placement games go. It is just basic math.

Say prior to the patch you gained or lost 10 MMR points per game. Now let’s say that number goes up to 150 with the Uncertainty Boost. You go into your placement games with a 1400 MMR and you do really well, going 7-3. Under the old system your MMR would be something like 1440, but in the new system with Uncertainty Boost that number jumps up to like 1700. That is a huge improvement! Not only has your MMR increased dramatically, but your ranking has probably gone up a whole Tier as well. Sadly, some players only pay attention to the fact that their placement puts them at Silver 2 and get upset as a result. Rather than appreciate on how much progress they have made, they focus on how they are still not where they want to be.

Now obviously we don’t know the actual numbers so all of this is just fuzzy math using HOTSLogs as a point of reference, but the point of the example still holds true.

If you feel like your MMR and your rank is not reflective of your current skill level, the only way to fix it is to play more games. The bigger the gap between your MMR and current your skill level, the more games it is going to take to fix it. The uncertainty Boost will help speed up the process, but you still have to put in the games. Feel free to have fun along the way, this is a video game after all. While it sucks to go on a seven game losing streak, especially if it is during your placement games, in the long run it all evens out so don’t let it get you down. There is a reason that the season lasts ten weeks.

It’s not where you are now that matters, it’s where you get to by the end of the season.

GL & HF!